About Flashcards on Brainscape

Introducing the Knowledge Genome

The Knowledge Genome Project is the initiative to catalog the world's entire body of "learnable" knowledge into its most fundamental Q&A pairs. We have aimed to make information accessible in this format so that Brainscape's adaptive learning engine can use it to help anyone learn anything as fast and efficiently as humanly possible.

The flashcards in this Knowledge Genome are distributed as complete "Classes". A student, teacher, professor, or publisher can easily create a Class and divide it into various Decks of flashcards.

Every night, our software analyzes all new Classes that have been created across the globe, and classifies them into one or more "tag" areas. For example, a Class's parent tag might be "Science", and the child tag might be "Anatomy". Clicking down the tree to "Anatomy" will show you all of the top-rated Classes related to that topic, which you can easily browse and study depending on which one meets your particular learning needs.

How Are the Tags Organized?

The organization of the tags in Brainscape's Knowledge Genome was based on several hundred hours of research into K-12 and university course catalogs, as well as various medical, law, and other professional knowledge taxonomies available on the web.

Brainscape has consolidated our understanding of all these knowledge taxonomies into our own Knowledge Genome, based on the most common terminologies used by other learning organizations. We hope that Brainscape's Knowledge Genome can become a new “standard” taxonomy for academic, vocational, and recreational knowledge for decades to come.

Of course, not all knowledge fits neatly into one of these class tags, as there is a very large “long tail.” For these, you can still use our Search functionality to discover millions of other collections of flashcards, or you can Browse the master A-Z classes directory in the footer.

What if I Don't Find the Flashcards I Want?

If you still can't find what you’re looking for, you can always make your own flashcards using our easy web-based content authoring system. Not only will you then be able to study custom content using Brainscape's unique Confidence-Based Repetition study system, but you will also be able to contribute your flashcards to the overall Knowledge Genome, to be used by other learners around the world (unless you decide to make them private).

However you collect your flashcards, you can always study them based on Brainscape’s scientifically proven study algorithm, helping you to learn faster, remember for longer, and free up those hours for other more important things in your life.

Learn Faster with Cognitive Science

Brainscape's magic is based on a new learning system we created called Confidence-Based Repetition (CBR). CBR is a modified version of spaced repetition that optimizes your learning by automatically determining how your study time is allocated.

There are three main steps in the ongoing CBR cycle.

First, Active Recall. Rather than simply "recognizing" the correct answer from a series of multiple choices, Brainscape (or really any flashcards) force you to recall the fact from scratch, thereby strengthening the neuron connections that your brain uses to encode that information.

The second step is Metacognition. As soon as you manually reveal the answer to a given flashcard, Brainscape asks you to rate, on a 1-5 scale, how well you think you knew the material. This act of self-assessment further deepens your new neuron connections.

Finally, the Spaced Repetition component. Brainscape uses your self-reported confidence rating to determine exactly how frequently to show you the flashcard, with low-confidence items repeated more often until you increase your confidence rating.

According to cognitive science research, the best time to review a concept is the longest amount of time before which you would have otherwise forgotten it. Brainscape ensures that you are repeating concepts within as close to this interval as possible, thus ensuring you don't waste time studying what you already know (or what you have already fully forgotten).

If you continue to use Brainscape, your hippocampus will get better and better at building & strengthening the neuron connections in your prefrontal cortex, thus improving how quickly and permanently your brain encodes long-term memories.